Introducing Museum Studies

Introducing Museum Studies is the first introductory textbook for museum studies. Providing a wide-ranging and original overview of museums from a historical and contemporary perspective, it covers key topics such as the history of the museum, the museum as a public space, visitors, and communities.

The book shows how museums, far from being neutral collections, exhibit objects which convey powerful symbolic meanings. This “cultural turn” away from the object as a thing in itself has placed museums at the centre of debates about public culture, citizenship, inclusion and repatriation. Museums are becoming increasingly reflexive given the awareness of the social and political role they serve and their ability to reflect the problems of our time.

Gordon Fyfe shows how and why this reflexivity creates a need for historical perspective on current practices: on the one hand museums are enmeshed in a changing world and on the other hand they exhibit change. At their best, museums help us to see that everything is on the move and that change is the natural order of things.

Accessibly written, this is the go-to introduction for scholars and students of museum studies, arts and cultural management, and heritage studies.